Australia Is The Third Least Affordable Country To Buy A House

Startling new data

2018-01-25T06:24:32Z

Image: Pixabay

Australia is up there with the world's least affordable housing, according to new research.

Sitting only behind Hong Kong, the 14th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey named Sydney and Melbourne in its top five least affordable housing markets, coming in second and fifth place respectively.

To tackle the problem, ex Family First Senator Bob Day has called on the Federal government to provide "an adequate and affordable" housing market for Australians.

"The distortion in the housing market… resulting from the supply-demand imbalance is enormous and affects every other area of a country’s economy," he said in the report.

"New home owners pay a much higher percentage of their income on house payments than they should. However, the real culprit was the refusal of governments to provide an adequate and affordable supply of land for new housing stock to meet demand

"The "scarcity" that drove up land prices is wholly contrived - it is a matter of political choice, not geographic reality. It is the product of restrictions imposed through planning regulation and zoning."

The report named Australia's 22 housing markets as "severely unaffordable", blaming the issue of urban containment or rather the restruction of urban sprawl, opting instead from greater density across existing suburbs.